Theory of Capitalism collapses

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_CaliforniaKid
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _CaliforniaKid »

Black Moclips wrote:1) Of course there is corporate waste. However, a corporation that wastes doesn't stay around for long does it?

Actually, large corporations can sustain significant amounts of corruption and waste both because their competitors have the same problem and because their losses are offset by the vast advantages of being a large corporation. But I'm really much more concerned with abuse than waste. Both government and corporate waste have been greatly exaggerated for polemical purposes.

Furthermore, a corporation wasting its resources does not impact me personally, unless I'm an owner of the company. I can choose not to do business with such a corporation. In this case, the market will punish the business if it doesn't change course.

Corporate waste in the sense of inefficiency may not have much impact on you, but corporate abuses can have very significant impact on you. Unregulated corporations have a tendency to pollute the environment, unsustainably plunder natural resources, employ strongarm tactics, exploit customers, sell unsafe products, and establish monopolies. These kinds of behaviors are difficult for a laissez-faire free market to self-regulate.

2) This of course, is not a new argument, but the standard zero sum fallacy - in otherwords, the pie is finite, and if he gets more, I get less. I reject this view, because wealth doesn't just exist, its created! The gap between rich and poor may grow wider; however, the bottom rises as the top ceiling expands.

I agree with you that the pie is not finite, and to some extent one could say that all boats are rising. However, even with welfare, unemployment benefits, universal public education, and graduated income taxes, the income of the wealthiest Americans has increased considerably more than the income of the poorest Americans. Without these government programs, the disparity might be even greater. So I say again, "economic opportunity under free market capitalism is decidedly unequal." It seems to me that a society that claims to stand for "equal opportunity" should take measures to level the playing field.

There are numerous counterpoints to your view and I won't give them here, other to ask a question. Tell me how the creation of Google, and the billions of dollars of wealth it has created, the jobs it has provided, has made anyone, anywhere poorer?

I'm not sure why you think I'm arguing against the existence of Google. My beef is not with markets or corporations as such, but merely the kind of untaxed and unregulated markets that the Tea Partiers apparently stand for.

But I'll humor you, anyway. Google for the last several years has been exploiting tax loopholes to cut its corporate income tax rate to a total of about 2.4%. This can be compared with the 35% standard corporate rate and the 25% rate of the average household. Because the rest of us don't have the resources to exploit such loopholes, we end up picking up Google's slack.

Also tell me how anything within the realm of the imagined powers of the Federal government, could do as much economic good as Google (without violately private property freedoms of course).

You're comparing apples to oranges. It's not really the government's job to create wealth. It's the government's job to regulate wealth-creation and wealth-distribution (among other things). Having said that, I am aware of some examples of publicly-owned companies that have performed very well. In Sacramento, customers of the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District have paid an average of about 30% less than customers of PG&E. SMUD has been very well managed, and my family counts itself lucky to be in the district. Sometimes public ownership works, and sometimes it doesn't. Voters have to consider these issue on a case-by-case basis, not on the principle that all government ownership is bad and all private ownership is good.

3) I’d like to see the historical evidence that the government has actually prevented an economic shock through regulation or policy and that we are better off because it, in contrast to letting the correction/shock happen. I think it is pretty likely that in any example brought up, it was the government’s policy or interference that led to the potential shock in the first place, and its subsequent actions were to solve problems that it created itself. But hey, I’m open to discussing it.

It's hard to know what would have happened in any given instance, but it's worth noting that we haven't had significant bank runs in this country since the Great Depression, even under conditions such as the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. This is probably due to institutions put in place during the New Deal, such as the FDIC.

Peace,

-Chris
_MadMonk
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _MadMonk »

Obiwan wrote:Obviously I'm not saying some conservative can't ever do anything wrong, but I am saying that Conservatism is what created this country, all the great things about it, and Liberalism is what has been trying to destroy it even from the beginning, but not only that has slowly whittled away at those great Conservative, Capitalist, and Freedom values.



Interesting historical revisionism, which I always considered a liberal, not a conservative, vice.

What created this country was the insistence of the liberal firebrand Samuel Adams and his supporters that the colonies needed to be independent of the mother country. It was the conservatives, lead by John Dickenson of Pennsylvania and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who opposed independence.

It was progressive Baptists and the liberal Thomas Jefferson who proposed and fought for the freedom of religion enshrined in the Bill of Rights; had the conservatives gained the day, the Episcopal Church would still be the official church in most states, and the Congregational Church in New England.

It was the conservative Chief Justice Roger Taney who tried to keep a large segment of the population in chattel slavery. It was the liberal Abraham Lincoln whose insistence on maintaining the Union in the face of conservative opposition actually led to the abolition of slavery.

It was the Radical Republicans, definitely not conservatives, who after the Civil War, proposed and fought for the Fourteenth Amendment, which extended the rights enshrined in the national constitution to citizens as regards their state governments as well.

Granted, it was the conservative Theodore Roosevelt who pushed the anti-trust regulations through Congress, but the Republican Party exacted its revenge and kicked him out, and TR went on to become a leader of the progressive movement. So I am claiming him for liberalism, too, because he eventually saw the light. :-)

MadMonk
_Markk
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _Markk »

1) Corporate waste and abuse are at least as prevalent as government waste and abuse, especially when corporations are unregulated and unaccountable.


Chris, with all respect you are not in the business world are you?. I am a project manager for a corporation that deals with public agencies on a daily basis and waste and mismanagement is at a level that is unexplainable, it is staggering at government waste and incompetence, again I deal with it daily. When waste exceeds the ability to survive in the corporate world, we simple fail and go under ( unless bailed out by tax payer $), if waste is abundant in government, raise taxes. I have failed to work with a government employee yet that has to worry about a profit report, if they run out of money in their budget for a project due to mismanagement and 'under-sight', they simply don't pay and pass the buck, and they keep their job and retire at 55 with 90% of their pay, buy a motor home and live a pretty secure life. The average government employee I deal with care about two things...3:30 (when they go home), and 55, when they retire.


If this might sound like sour grapes...it is. LoL
Don't take life so seriously in that " sooner or later we are just old men in funny clothes" "Tom 'T-Bone' Wolk"
_Brackite
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _Brackite »

Obiwan wrote:
Brackite wrote:I am hoping that the Federal Government doesn't shut down this weekend.


Actually, you shouldn't be "afraid" of the Government taking some days off. This is just another lying "scare tactic" by Liberals.

The government shuts down for various holidays' every year and the world doesn't end.
The government has shut down many times before, most of which there never even was a wimper from anyone let alone the media, and the world didn't end.

Further, that's Liberals for you. Their "Entitlement Mentality" runs all through them.
If they don't get their way, they are like children and run away to other states, shut down the government, thrash government property, claim fraud and demand recounts when there is no evidence of it, etc. Rather than actually do the right thing and be honorable losers. Liberals think they are entitled to their way ONLY. Tolerance is not in their vocabulary.



Hi Obiwan,

Thank Goodness there wasn't a Federal Government shutdown this last weekend. I now very much like Congressman John Boehner of Ohio, as Speaker of the House. Speaker John Boehner did a great job with compromising a deal with President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter
_Pollypinks
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _Pollypinks »

If capitalism is so great, what happened with Wall Street, and how come none of them are in jail? If it's so great and fair, why do Wells Fargo, General Electric, Citigroups, and many more billion dollar ops pay ZERO in taxes? It's only a matter of time before we have revolt in our country, where fairness is non-existant, and democracy is a buzz word for evangelicals. Since everyone loves capitalism, and believes that not everyone has to play by the rules, why is it okay to decimate the middle class?
_Kevin Graham
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _Kevin Graham »

Pollypinks wrote:If capitalism is so great, what happened with Wall Street, and how come none of them are in jail? If it's so great and fair, why do Wells Fargo, General Electric, Citigroups, and many more billion dollar ops pay ZERO in taxes? It's only a matter of time before we have revolt in our country, where fairness is non-existant, and democracy is a buzz word for evangelicals. Since everyone loves capitalism, and believes that not everyone has to play by the rules, why is it okay to decimate the middle class?


Because that's what Jesus wanted.

Oh wait... maybe that was Rush Limbaugh.
_Kevin Graham
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _Kevin Graham »

I now very much like Congressman John Boehner of Ohio, as Speaker of the House. Speaker John Boehner did a great job with compromising a deal with President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.


It is because of idiots like Boehner that a Government Shutdown was ever likely to happen. Now you want to give him credit for not going through with this threats?

Jesus.
_why me
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _why me »

Jason Bourne wrote:
Hey Kev

I few weeks ago I finished the Krugman book The Return of Depression Economics. In the intro chapters he extolled free markets and capitalism and pointed to the failure of the USSR and the Eastern block as indicative of the failures of socialism.


It has always been debated about whether the USSR and the eastern bloc were socialist. For many Marxists and socialists, they were not. The trotskyists considered the USSR an abomination. And the Bernsteinians considered Lenin a heretic. Here is a fact: Socialism existed in theory long before the USSR and Marx. There are many socialisms as there are capitalisms. Krugman is part of the elite who wishes to taint socialism with connotations of the USSR to keep the masses in capitalism.
I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.
Joseph Smith


We are “to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all…”
Joseph Smith
_why me
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _why me »

Black Moclips wrote:There is absolutely nothing wrong with the basics of capitalism - an economic system whereby the means of production are owned privately and operated for a profit. There is nothing immoral or evil about such a system. The freedoms of this country, coupled with capitalism as its base, are responsible for the greatness this country has achieved.



The greatness that is America has been achieved by the blood of many. First, we have American history from sea to shining sea. All draped in blood: the native american and mexican blood. From coast to coast, land was bought cheap or fought over. The pursuit of happiness (the right to private property) brought slavery and greed. American corporations have been exploiting the masses since they became part of the landscape.
I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.
Joseph Smith


We are “to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all…”
Joseph Smith
_why me
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Re: Theory of Capitalism collapses

Post by _why me »

Black Moclips wrote:
The beauty of the free market, is that if left alone without interference by our wonderful, selfless polticians, it will correct itself quicker and efficiently than any legislation, commitee, or bureacracy of the government. We rarely, however, let the markets alone.


We only need to go back to the 19th century to see unfettered capitalism at work. It was awful: child labor, poor working conditions, no security, long hours etc. It was terrible for many people who were working class. And such a capitalism lasted until the great depression when millions of americans found themselves without a job and the government needed to decide on whether or not they needed to be involved. And of course, the became involved with the new deal etc.

Read Engel's book: The Origin of the Working Class in England and see just how terrible capitalism was.

We should give Karl Marx a great thank you for detailing the abuses of capitalism in his first volume of Capital. Because of him, socialism became respectable and scientific.
I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.
Joseph Smith


We are “to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all…”
Joseph Smith
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